Thulkadoone

About the Book

Thousands of years ago a tiny singularity racing through the cold bleakness of space collided with the Earth. Finding itself trapped it began to consume the planet core . . . and unwittingly forced mankind into a race for survival. During the Earth’s struggle against its inevitable destruction great escape ships were built and a small part of the world’s population fled to the cosmos to begin settling new worlds. The Earth finally surrendered, collapsing upon itself until it was squeezed down to a diameter of only two centimeters and became the dissenting center of a new black hole.

Without hope, the millions of people left behind struggled with fear, jealousy, and despair until, in their brooding fatalism, a new and murderous religion blossomed. A religion that presumed the death of Earth to be God´s command; they believed it was the Apocalypse. The fanatics, known as Pockers, preached that it was wrong for people to take flight and escape, to evade God’s judgment. The new order quickly swelled with extremists whose only aim became the extermination of the escaping human race. The zealots infected the escape ships in hopes they could one day destroy them.

Now, two thousand years after the first settlers were dropped on the jungle planet Thulkadoone, a self-inflicted time/space anomaly has stalled the escape ship Chandraskar, trapping her between the stars. A salver pilot named Jason knows he may lose his family when the ship’s council decides he must return to Thulkadoone with a small crew to find the problem and hopefully repair it before it is too late.

Once on the planet they discover the descendants of the settlers have mysteriously disappeared, but find instead a race of aliens who have developed (with the help of the settler’s computers) from rudimentary tool users to a sophisticated, if fractured, society at war among themselves. Jason and two others must pass a ceremonial test before they will be allowed to journey to the anomaly . . . and time is running out. To make matters worse, a Pocker has infiltrated Jason´s crew and will stop at nothing to sabotage their mission.

To solve the anomaly, Jason and two of his men must travel on foot through a jungle filled with dangerous animals, fight through a brutal second civilization of aliens, cross an icy mountain range, and then enter the dome of Chulankar. Here they find the descendants of the settlers trapped under a new dictatorial rule. Jason learns the Chandraskar is in grave danger of being destroyed by the Pockers and he must find a way to return in time to save her, but the trip back will take two hundred years!

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